Obama: Between a Rod and a hard place

Already, Obama’s Hawaiian vacation has been interrupted by news of an Israeli incursion into Gaza. He faces a mounting economic crisis even before he takes office.

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And now, just as Obama was starting to distance himself from the machinations over filling his Senate seat, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s surprise pick is dragging him back in to the home-state mess – along with the kind of hard-edged racial politics Obama tries to avoid.

Blagojevich, who has been charged with attempting to sell the Senate seat, announced Tuesday he was tapping Roland Burris, the first African-American to win statewide election in Illinois and the closest thing in the state to a black elder statesman.

But Obama is backing efforts led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to block Burris, saying Blagojevich is too tainted by corruption charges to make the pick.

It’s not clear Reid can block Burris. But Obama’s bigger headache could come from a longtime South Side congressman and one-time rival – Rep. Bobby Rush – who is unmistakably daring officials not to block the ascension of an African-American to replace Obama.

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“I would ask you to not hang or lynch the appointee while you castigate the appointer,” Rush said at Blagojevich’s news conference. “Let me just remind you that there presently is no African-American in the U.S. Senate.”

Until now, Obama and other Democrats have been able to isolate Blagojevich. But Rush’s blessing leaves Obama caught between the Senate leadership and two leading, old-guard African-Americans politicians in his home state.

Rush’s move isn’t the first time he’s made life difficult for Obama. The president-elect ran in a primary against the veteran congressman in 2000. Rush easily held his seat, winning 61-30 and temporarily sidetracking then state Sen. Obama’s ambitions.

In that campaign for a seat on Chicago’s heavily black South Side, Rush, a Baptist minister and former Black Panther, mixed a familiar message of race, class, and generation of the sort that is often used by older African-Americans against upstart primary rivals.

“Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it,” Rush said to a Chicago paper at the time.

Democrats familiar with Obama’s thinking suggest that he’ll stay as quiet as possible about the matter. The president-elect believes the Senate is well within its bounds not to seat Burris that it would be difficult for him to work effectively under the cloud that would come with being appointed by a governor facing federal charges.

One thing could short-circuit the controversy - Jesse White, the Illinois secretary of state, said he will not certify Burris as the replacement for Obama’s seat. White is an African-American.

For his part, Burris said it’s inconceivable that the state of Illinois should start the new Congress “shorthanded,” with just one senator.

Burris also said he has “no relationship” to charges that Blagojevich tried to sell Obama’s Senate seat for personal gain and said of the governor, “In this legal process, you’re innocent until you’re proven guilty.”

“I ask the people of Illinois to place the same faith and trust in me as they have in the past,” said Burris, 71, who has promised to serve the remaining two years of the Senate term and not run for reelection.